Mike O'Connell

Every live jazz performance I’ve ever been to, whether in a restaurant, a night club, a concert hall, etc. one thing is always true: people talk during the bass solo.

Saturday night at Keystone Korner in Baltimore… no one talked during the bass solo.

Saying Ron Carter has “played with everybody” is a little like noting that water is wet. It’s the second line of his Wikipedia page, for crying out loud, that he holds a Guinness World Record for playing bass on the greatest number of jazz albums: 2,221. Anyone claiming to not know who Ron Carter is has just never heard of music. Funny idea for a cartoon: old-school stereo’s “treble” and “bass” knobs are replaced by ones that say “treble” and “Ron Carter.” (Note to self: send that one to The New Yorker when R.C. finally goes home.)

Not many people can say they’ve played with Miles Davis and A Tribe Called Quest and appeared on an episode of Treme. (Those are like my three favorite things right there.)

And this weekend he added a fourth: Keystone Korner in Baltimore, where people go to actually listen to jazz.

That’s why when the old man with the bass is playing a solo… audience doesn’t talk, audience listens.

I’ve sung the praises of Keystone Korner before, and this post will be no different. They consistently bring in top-quality talent and present America’s art form with the respect it deserves. Ron Carter, too, plays with an obvious dignity (can I say gravitas?), and surrounds himself with the best sidemen (and sidelady!) around. He’s the Joe DiMaggio of jazz, the “Greatest Living Ballplayer” still walking among us, though secretly we wish we could see him again in the lineup with Lou Gehrig, Phil Rizzuto, or Herbie Hancock.

I’m pretty sure when he was up to bat…

no one would talk.

Major League Baseball is the whitest old man sport we’ve got, but even MLB sees the stitches on the fastball every once in a while.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of seeing my two favorite teams in two separate contests, a Yankees-Red Sox matinee followed by the Washington Nationals playing an interleague game in primetime.

Interesting note about the proceedings?

Neither was on TV.

(You know, old white guy TV.)

I guess sometimes instead of going to where your (dying) audience is, you bring your product to where the audience you want is. (Pardon the awkward sentence structure there–it really was the only way to describe it.)

For what it’s worth both games were enjoyable, and not just because they resulted in wins for my chosen sides (and helping Yankee playoff chances). Both mlb.tv (Yankees-Red Sox) and good old youtube (Nats-Blue Jays) really did present a good show. (And no blackouts!) In true 21st-century fashion I was able to select “home” or “away” announcers, and on youtube of course one could participate in various fan polls and chat features. No doubt I was supposed to tag myself on social media or some such thing, but no, the baseball itself was enough for me.

The old white guy version of watching a baseball game.

There’s about a hundred cliches I could throw out to explain last night’s contest between the New York Yankees and the Chicago White Sox, played at the “Field of Dreams” in Dyersville, Iowa. Most of them are part of Crash Davis’s speech in Kevin Costner’s other baseball movie, Bull Durham.

With its 162-game regular season schedule it’s tough to get up for any one particular regular season baseball game, but this one was worth it. Played before eight thousand fans and a few thousand stalks of corn, the Southsiders topped the Bronx Bombers 9-8, but that wasn’t the story. A classy affair from the start, the end could be described only as dream-like.

Walk-off home run into the cornfield? Are you kidding me?

Shoeless Joe would be proud.

Believe it or not in 2021 there are still places in the world that have no Wi-Fi or cellular service.
And that’s where I am.
See ya Wednesday!

Everyone has to have a hometown–Binghamton’s mine, once quipped Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling. Ditto for yours truly. Now safely back in my adopted surroundings of Northern Virginia I can report that during my entire stay in New York I was not even once approached by the governor in any unwelcome manner.

(Pause for uncomfortable chuckle.)

The most enjoyable part of my journey, of course, was going home, not just because it brought me home but because I did make a stop along the way. For several years now I’ve wanted to visit PNC Field, home of the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Railriders, AAA affiliate of the New York Yankees. Christened “Lackawanna County Stadium” when it opened in 1989, it was rebuilt, remodeled, and totally overhauled in 2013 with “Yankee money.” Yeah, the big club has money to spend and it has done so lavishly in Scranton (actually in nearby Moosic, PA), making the field the most famous tourist stop in Scranton this side of the Dunder-Mifflin branch office.

I’ve been to probably a thousand bush league baseball games in my life. This one wasn’t no bush. No question this was the nicest minor league stadium (it’s a stadium, not a park) I’d ever been to, though that’s a little like saying out of all the ’60s bands that came from Liverpool The Beatles are my favorite. It’s an impressive act, though I’ll be honest I did miss the little homespun nuances found in other minor league parks. This one’s pretty corporate. Home run seats (there are seats around the entire outfield which is unusual for minor leagues) and a grassy berm on which one can view the game are a nice touch, but overall it’s a little devoid of color. One minor league touch I did appreciate: my general admission ticket was two dollars. Coupled with free parking my total investment on the evening ended up pretty reasonable, more signs the Yankees are obviously subsidizing this place. And speaking of the big club, as an unexpected bonus I did get to see 2020 home run champ Luke Voit at first base making a rehab start. [Given the big club’s recent addition, however, of Anthony Rizzo (the new Sultan of Swat thus far) one wonders whether Voit’s “rehab” start was not exactly temporary.]

For what it’s worth the Railriders fell to the Worcester Red Sox 7-2. I was on the road long before the end of the game, but it did mark the second time in my life I’d seen a Yankees-Red Sox clash. Actually I’ve never seen a real Yankees-Red Sox game, but I’ve done the AAA equivalent twice, having seen the then-Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees play the now-defunct Pawtucket Red Sox in 2008. That was at McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, before the PawSox moved to Worcester, Mass.

I used to call it the best minor league park I’d ever been to.

Used to.